Comparison of GIS vector file formats

The following tables compare general and technical information for a number of vector GIS file formats. Please see the individual products' articles for further information. This article is not all-inclusive or necessarily up-to-date. Unless otherwise specified in footnotes, comparisons are based on the stable versions without any add-ons, extensions or external programs.

General Information

	Design Authority	Software license
Geography Markup Language GML	Open Geospatial Consortium	?
AutoCAD DXF
Shapefile	ESRI
Simple Features
MapInfo TAB format
National Transfer Format
TIGER
Cartesian coordinate system
Vector Product Format
GeoMedia

Feature Types

	Point	Multipoint	Line	Polyline	Polygon	Multipolygon
Personal Geodatabase	Yes	No	Yes	No	Yes	No
Shapefile^[1]	Yes	Yes	?	Yes	Yes	No

Geography Markup Language (GML) - XML based open standard (by OpenGIS) for GIS data exchange
AutoCAD DXF - Contour elevation plots in AutoCAD DXF format
Shapefile - ESRI's open, hybrid vector data format using SHP, SHX and DBF files
Simple Features - Open Geospatial Consortium specification for vector data
MapInfo TAB format - MapInfo's vector data format using TAB, DAT, ID and MAP files
National Transfer Format (NTF) - National Transfer Format (mostly used by the UK Ordnance Survey)
TIGER - Topologically Integrated Geographic Encoding and Referencing
Cartesian coordinate system (XYZ) - Simple point cloud
Vector Product Format - National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA)'s format of vectored data for large geographic databases.
GeoMedia - Intergraph's Microsoft Access based format for spatial vector storage.
ISFC - Intergraph's MicroStation based CAD solution attaching vector elements to a relational Microsoft Access database
Personal Geodatabase - ESRI's closed, integrated vector data storage strategy using Microsoft's Access MDB format
File Geodatabase - ESRI's geodatabase format, stored as folders in a file system.
Coverage - ESRI's closed, hybrid vector data storage strategy. Legacy ArcGIS Workstation / ArcInfo format with reduced support in ArcGIS Desktop lineup
Spatial Data File - Autodesk's high-performance geodatabase format, native to MapGuide
GeoJSON - a lightweight format based on JSON, used by many open source GIS packages

References

^ ESRI (July, 1998). "ESRI Shapefile technical description" (PDF): 4. Retrieved 2010-25-01. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= and |date= (help); Cite journal requires |journal= (help)

[1] ESRI (July, 1998). "ESRI Shapefile technical description" (PDF): 4. Retrieved 2010-25-01. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= and |date= (help); Cite journal requires |journal= (help)

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